Concepts of Thinking

11 Key excerpts on "Concepts of Thinking"

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  The Psychology of Thinking

  Reasoning, Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

  • John Paul Minda(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  1 The Psychology of Thinking Thinking is so central to the human experience that it has been described as the essence of being. We are all familiar with the phrase, “Je pense donc je suis” or “I think therefore I am”. This comes, of course, from Descartes’ Discourse on Method (1637) and underscores what is so crucial and compelling about the study of thinking. Humans, like other animals, behave, learn, respond, communicate, and remember. But humans also think. We can discover something new by thinking about it. We can solve problems in the mind, visualize solutions, and arrive at an important decision by thinking. We can be aware of our own thoughts and aware of the consequences of our actions and behaviours. This book is about the psychology of thinking. That might sound redundant, given that psychology is often defined as the study of the mind or of mental activity. In other words, if psychology is not about thinking, what else can it be about? Psychology is a very broad field, encompassing everything from the study of neurotransmitters and basic neuroanatomy to the study of learning and memory to the understanding of mental health and the study of group behaviour. This book is concerned with the study and understanding of the thought process. Thinking is usually studied within the broader field of cognition. Cognitive psychology has traditionally been defined as the study of information processing and behaviour. This encompasses everything from basic attention and perception to memory, concepts, and thinking. As a topic within the study of cognitive psychology, the psychology of thinking is concerned with complex mental behaviours, such as problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making, and becoming an expert. A good understanding of basic cognition is very useful in understanding the psychology of thinking, but it is not necessary

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  Fundamentals of Learning and Memory

  • John P. Houston(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  These in-clude: 1. Cognition as information processing. Many psychologists think of cognition as the overall process-ing of information. According to Neisser (1967), cognition is an inclu-sive term that refers to all the proc-esses by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, retrieved, and used. Although very broad and general, this defini-tion does have value because it underlines the fact that many cogni-tive psychologists think about think-ing in terms of information process-ing. They use the language of computers. In fact, some have at-tempted to construct computer pro-grams that will simulate human thinking. These efforts usually fall under the heading of artificial intelli-gence. 2. Cognition as manipulation of mental symbols. Some psychologists prefer to think of cognitive events as the manipulation of mental symbols. As we have seen, a symbol is any-thing that stands for, or represents, something else. Therefore, when I ask you to think of a dog, and you do so, whatever it is that you are think-ing of is a symbol for dog. Symbols free us from being trapped in the present. They allow us to make excursions into the past and future. For example, when you think of the Boston Tea Party, you are visiting the past through the use of symbols. When you think about the next presi-dential election, you are moving into the future in a way which would not be possible without symbols. 3. Cognition as problem solving. As you will recall, we mentioned prob-lem solving back in Chapter 1. A problem exists when a motivated or-ganism is blocked from attaining a goal by an obstacle or obstacles (see Figure 1.5). Some cognitive psychol-ogists like to think of problem solv-ing as the essence of cognition. They feel that cognition refers to the ways in which we gather and use informa-tion in the pursuit of the solution to problems. Obviously, some cognitive events, such as finding the answer to a mathematical question, involve problem solving.

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  Psychological Foundations of Education

  Learning and Teaching

  • B. Claude Mathis, John W. Cotton, Lee Sechrest(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  6 THINKING AND CONCEPT FORMATION How human beings think is the theme of most of psychology. Think-ing calls upon—activates—the thinker's nervous system, intelligence, social attitudes and habits, and developmental patterns—some of the areas of research in psychology. Historically, psychology began as a dis-cipline concerned with thinking, or consciousness. Philosophers specu-lated about mental content; one, John Locke, felt that the mind was blank at birth and that mental content was accumulated with experience. Thinking was a process of associating the impressions and awarenesses experienced; it was also a process of reflecting on experiences through the use of memory. Locke's view is similar to the contemporary attitude that man's mind is analogous to a machine that receives stimuli, records them, and responds. From Locke's model, thinking and reacting would be difficult to separate conceptually, since one would be dependent upon the other. A different view of the mind was held by philosophers like René Descartes. Descartes believed that man's mind existed and was not the entire creation of experience. Two theories about the thought processes, or mental content, have prevailed in psychology. One has been that thought is dependent upon a multitude of simple associations, mental content then being created by the formation and expression of these associations. The opposing theory is that thinking is basically different from the activity involving the asso-192 Thinking and Concept Formation 193 ciation of stimuli and responses. The association point of view has some-times been referred to as a uni-process theory; its counterpart, with thinking a deliberate and unique process, has been called a dual process theory (21). The seventeenth-century philosophers, Locke and Descartes, were early exponents of these two theories about thought and thinking. René Descartes Descartes (1596-1650) lived a generation earlier than Locke (1632-1704).

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  Cognition

  • Thomas A. Farmer, Margaret W. Matlin(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Cognitive Psychology: Overview The term cognition, or mental activity, refers to the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowl- edge. Cognition is inescapable, meaning that your cognitive processes are always at work. They grant you the ability to recognize and interpret stimuli in your environment and to react strategically to such INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2 information. Cognitive processes grant you the ability to plan, to create, to interact with others, and to process the thoughts, sensations, and emotions that you experience. If cognition operates every time you acquire some information, place it in storage, transform that information, and use it . . . then cognition includes a wide range of mental processes! This textbook will explore many of these mental processes, such as perception, memory, imagery, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making. As you will see throughout this book, your cognitive processes do not function in isolation from one another. Instead, they work together in intricate and highly coordinated ways to create your conscious (and sometimes nonconscious) experiences. For example, you are performing multiple cognitive tasks simultaneously as your read this paragraph. You are using pattern recognition to create words from an assortment of squiggles and lines that form the letters on this page. You are also consulting your memory and your knowledge about language to search for word meanings and to link together the ideas in this paragraph. Additionally, right now, as you think about these cognitive tasks, you are engaging in another cognitive task called metacognition— you are thinking about your own thought processes.

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  The Intelligent Mind

  On the Genesis and Constitution of Discursive Thought

  • Richard Dien Winfield(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2 Whatever those thoughts may be, they cannot be formed and apprehended without being verbalized in either inner or overt speech. The meaning of thought may be completely imageless, but that meaning cannot be verbalized unless imagination keeps in mind the configuration of the words that express thinking. Consequently, thinking always involves imagination to supply at least the signs of the words with which thoughts are formulated. Moreover, the thoughts that thinking conceives may not be pure, deriving their entire content from logical determination. Thought can equally conceive concepts, judgments, and inferences that are empirical, deriving their content from general representations supplied by imagination and intuition. In the latter case, thinking will conceive thoughts whose content is dependent upon and in relation to external sources. The thoughts so conceived do not lose their form as thoughts, but their content is alien to that form. The psychology of thinking therefore involves distinct types of thought characterized by different relations between the form and content of thinking. Each of these types of thought involves the logical determinations of concept, judgment, and syllogism, but each realizes these logical determinations in particular psychological activities distinguished by the psychological factors they employ. In all cases, language is necessarily at work, without having to undergo any grammatical or lexical modification. Consequently, the different stages in the psychology of thinking are not stages in linguistic development. Although thought always involves language, the development of thinking proper is distinct from the phylogenetic genesis of language, the historical modifications of language, and the ontogenetic maturation of discursive individuals.

  The different relations between the form and content of thinking represent different stages in the autonomy of thought. Whenever thinking has a content different from thought, it occupies itself with something extraneous, something given independently of its own activity. In that case, thinking has a formal character, reflecting how its activity does not generate the content of what it thinks. Instead, it draws that content from some other source. The formality of a thinking whose form and content fall apart thus involves heteronomy, in that thinking takes on a content it finds given instead of thinking something immanent to thought itself. The more thinking determines the content of what is thought, the more heteronomy is overcome, and the more conceptual autonomy is achieved.

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  Dasha's Journal

  A Cat Reflects on Life, Catness and Autism

  • T. O. Daria(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Jessica Kingsley Publishers

    (Publisher)

  C HAPTER 6 Thinking about Thinking Since I started my research I’ve been thinking about… thinking. As I prefer to base all my studies on a sound philo-sophical ground, I start with René Descartes’ principle estab-lishing the existence of a being from the fact of its thinking or awareness – ‘Cogito ergo sum’ or ‘I think, therefore I am.’ I know that ‘I am’ – I’m alive, aren’t I? I know that I think, but when Polly asked me what thinking meant I had to think before I could answer my friend’s question. The fact is that humans often use several words to describe one and the same notion. They call them synonyms. Synonyms : two or more (very different) words with the same meaning, e.g., ‘cat’, ‘puss’ and ‘feline’ mean ‘Dasha’ (i.e. me). The meaning is the same but some-times synonyms may differ in neutrality/formality and emotional colouring. For instance, when you approach me as a researcher it’s better to call me ‘feline’; if you don’t want to be too formal, you may call me a ‘cat’. My family and my friends may call me Dasha. (Don’t call me ‘puss’ – I don’t like it!) The other word for thinking in human vocabulary is cogni-tion. Eventually, I came up with these definitions: 71 Thinking : using thoughts. Cognition : a general term for mental processes by which sensory information is interpreted, stored and used. Theoretically, these two words are interchangeable and mean the same, but, illogically, some HSs insist that, while discuss-ing animals, it is useful to distinguish between ‘thinking’ and ‘cognition’. They define cognition as processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced and elaborated, and thinking as attending to the animal’s internal mental images or representations. They say that many animals can cognate (i.e. get sensory information and store it in their memory) but are unable to think because they have only a very simple level of consciousness.

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  Psychology

  Six Perspectives

  • Dodge Fernald(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  It ranges from fan-tasy to high-level problem solving. Rarely used without a modifier, it includes analytical thinking, which is separating a whole into its basic components, and synthetic thinking, which proceeds in the opposite direction, developing a whole from diverse parts. It includes convergent thinking, aimed at discov-ering a central idea or single answer to a problem, and divergent thinking, which produces several different answers to the same problem (Sternberg, 2000). Except for immediate sensation, thinking depends on memory. But what do we manipulate in thinking? To a large extent we manipulate concepts. A concept designates a category or a general idea about something; it considers a group of objects or events as equivalent in some respect, for they possess a common property. Many words express concepts. The word book expresses a concept; it refers to sheets of printed pages bound together. A textbook, novel, and biography are subclasses of a book; each of them also represents a concept. Thinking is based on concepts that, in turn, are acquired through thinking. The words Principia Mathematica, meaning Newton’s book, refer to that particular object; therefore, they are not a concept. The words Logic Theorist do not designate a concept, for they too refer to a particular object, event, person, place, or other specific instance. In effective thought, concepts must be organized in some meaningful fash-ion, often expressed in a proposition, which is a statement or declaration. Thinking in the propositional mode uses words and makes a statement; it proposes or asserts something in words. As symbols, these words typically do not resemble their referents; they do not appear like whatever they represent. In contrast, images have the appearance of their referents. A visual image of a book looks like a book; an auditory image of a song sounds like that song, and so forth for gustatory, kinesthetic, and other sensory modalities.

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  Psychology

  • Douglas Bernstein, , , (Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  We begin by examining a general framework for understanding human thinking and then go on to look at some specific cognitive processes. BASIC FUNCTIONS OF THOUGHT What good is thinking, anyway? Thinking involves five main operations or functions: describing, elaborating, deciding, planning, and guiding action. Figure 7.1 shows how these functions can be organized into a circle of thought . The Circle of Thought Consider how the circle of thought operated in Dr. Wallace’s case. It began when she re-ceived information about Laura’s symptoms that allowed her to describe the problem. Next, Basic Functions of Thought 219 Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 220 Thought and Language Dr. Wallace elaborated on this information by using her knowledge, experience, and powers of reasoning to consider what disorders might cause such symptoms. Then she made a decision to investigate a possible cause, such as anemia. To pursue this decision, she came up with a plan —and then acted on that plan. But the circle of thought did not stop there. Information from the blood test gave new descriptive information, from which Dr. Wallace elaborated further to reach another decision, create a new plan, and guide her next action. Each stage in the circle of thought was also influenced by her overall intention— in this case, to find and treat her patient’s problem. The processes making up the circle of thought usually occur so quickly and are so complex that slowing them down for careful analysis might seem impossible.

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  Educational Psychology

  • Roxana Moreno(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Students share and discuss their ideas, predictions, and reasoning with their classmates before they begin to test their ideas. Students become aware of their own thinking by responding to a question or by attempting to solve a problem or challenge. 2 Expose beliefs Figure 7.4 The conceptual change model. B 248 •••••••••••••••••• Chapter 7 • Complex Cognitive Processes ● WHAT IS THINKING? Thinking is the process of manipulating and transforming information in our working memory. In Chapter 6 we discussed several cognitive processes, including rehearsal, elaboration, organization, visualization, storing, encoding, and retrieval. All these processes are examples of thinking because they are aimed at consciously manipulat- ing or transforming information. Thinking also happens as students learn new concepts in the classroom, which we discussed in the prior sections. In this section, we explore other complex thinking processes, specifically reasoning, decision making, creative thinking, metacognition, and critical thinking. Reasoning Reasoning can be defined as the process of logically drawing conclusions from evidence (Sternberg & Ben Zeev, 2001; Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972). Reasoning is typically classified into deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive Reasoning. Deductive reasoning involves deriving specific conclusions from general rules. Therefore, deductive reasoning goes from the general to the spe- cific ( Johnson-Laird, 2000) and requires learning a rule and then understanding how C L ASS R O O M T I PS How to Promote Conceptual Change Strategies to Promote Conceptual Change Examples Help students become aware of their misconceptions. Promote cognitive conflict between students’ misconceptions and the new concept. Use elaboration and organization methods to help students encode the new concept meaningfully. Encourage classroom dialogues to help students achieve deeper conceptual understanding.

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  Learning and Cognition

  • Vibeke Grøver Aukrust(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier

    (Publisher)

  Although divergent thinking is the hallmark of creativity, most school-based problems require convergent thinking. Cognitive Processes and Types of Knowledge in Problem Solving Problem solving can be divided into two major phases: problem representation and problem solution. Problem representation involves building a mental representation of the problem, and includes the cognitive process of representing (i.e., building a situation model, that is, a mental representation of the situation described in the problem). Problem solution involves devising and carry-ing out a plan for solving the problem, and includes the cognitive processes of planning (i.e., devising a plan), executing (i.e., carrying out the plan), and monitoring (i.e., tracking the effectiveness of the plan). The cognitive processes involved in problem represen-tation and problem solution may interact, rather than occur in linear order. For example, a student may be given the following word problem: ‘‘Sarah has three mar-bles. David has two more marbles than Sarah. How many marbles does David have?’’ In representing the problem, the student must translate each sentence into an internal mental representation, such as ‘‘Sarah’s marbles ¼ 3’’ and ‘‘David’s marbles ¼ Sarah’s marbles þ 2,’’ and mentally integrate them into a situation model, such as a spatial representation consisting of a bar for Sarah’s marbles (3 units high), a bar on top of it for the difference between Sarah’s and David’s marbles (2 units high), and a bar next these for David’s marbles (indicating that Sarah’s marbles and the difference set of marbles are subsets of David’s marbles). Planning involves determining the operations to be performed, such as determining that 3 and 2 must be added together. Executing involves carrying out the oper-ation(s), such as computing that 5 is the sum of 3 and 2. Monitoring involves detecting when a plan is not working, a step was not executed correctly, or an answer is ques-tionable.

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  Critical Thinking

  Conceptual Perspectives and Practical Guidelines

  • Christopher P. Dwyer(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Please include the processes and skills that you think are the most important for critical thinking and 1 Explain why you included them. 2 Explain the relationships shared among the processes in your framework. 3 Explain why you may have decided to exclude certain processes. 24 Frameworks for Thinking 2 Memory and Comprehension An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. ~ Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) Though the frameworks presented in the previous chapter provide a descriptive representation of the thinking processes necessary for critical thinking, as well as links and shared relationships among them, it is also important to consider empirical cognitive and educational psychology research that has investigated these processes. Thus, this chapter presents an empirical outlook on the foundational thinking processes discussed in the previous chapter. Specifically, memory and comprehension are dis- cussed in detail by reference to research from the fields of cognitive and educational psychology. For an individual to remember information, a number of processes must first take place, such as active processing, encoding, storage and retrieval of information. More specifically, one must first attend to the information and then organize it in a meaningful way, for the purposes of successful recall. For example, when reading for the purpose of learning, people actively process information. Broadbent (1958) proposed that infor- mation is held in limited capacity short-term storage after it is actively attended to or processed; and through manipulation of that information within short-term storage, it can be transferred into permanent storage, where it is presumably represented as a form of knowledge (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Baddeley, 2000; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Broadbent, 1958; Craik & Tulving, 1975). The effective transfer of information from short- term storage to long-term memory (LTM) dictates what will be remem- bered.

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